Tolerance cannot be measured in terms of degrees of intolerance. I am essentially opposed to burning books even when they incite others to violence. But freedom is either an absolute or it is conditioned on not inciting others to violence. Anything else is rationalized bigotry.

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Sunday, September 2, 2012

Labelling

We are all
born with labels. Some labels are inherited from our parents (even though not
all are genetically forced upon us) and some labels are imposed on us by
society.

The labels
we are born with denote our genetic disposition: white, black; red-head, blond;
blue-eyed, brown eyed; short, tall; fat and thin.The labels we inherit without any biological
markers are the religion of our parents, our prejudices, and more critically,
our feelings of self-worth (you’re over-weight, your stupid).

Some are legal
and some insidious.They denote our
status in society, for instance, married or divorced, single or spinster. Being
a spinster denigrates womanhood and there is no similarly disparaging term for
a man in the English language. We are old
and young, a goody-goody or a cad. Labels are used to reinforce class divisions.
And then there are the judgements of society: retarded, slut, lazy and
over-sensitive.

As often as
not these latter names serve no more than to impose the values or prejudices of
one group onto another. Very soon after 9/11 Britain’s Labour government introduced
legislation intended to stifle speech that it defined as inflammatory. The Imam
of the Central London Mosque stated that if the new law protected Muslims from
violence it was ‘acceptable’ as long as it
did not impede the Islamic right to free speech.

What he inferred
was that religious prejudice was acceptable when it served an Islamic purpose while
anything opposing it was incitement. When the head of the extreme British National
Party or ‘BNP’ was tried in court for a speech that was deemed to have incited
hatred against Muslims he won the case because he proved to the court that he
was simply taking quotes from the Koran and pointing out the danger inherent in
what Islam itself allows its followers to say and do. After the courts failure
to convict, the government responded that it would have to consider ways to
tighten up the law. Few supported this Liberal-Left attack on free speech. It
implied that Islamic racism and its incitement to violence was acceptable while
protesting against it was not. And we have seen this principle used against Israel, here in the UK.

In this case
labels have been used to criminalise those who practice free speech and to attempt
to assign privileges to one group over another.

But then labels
are far too often used to reinforce comfortable prejudices. By
their repetition these sound bites serve only to benefit the mentally
lazy.They are a short-hand for those
determined to remain ignorant; those to whom ‘thought’ must be served up as a
convenience food. One must not disturb that which intolerant people regard as
serving a purpose.

When society
applies different rules to separate groups it is a form of legalised and
intermittent apartheid (another label).Rape
and murder become words with flexible meaning (more labels) because they help
to explain justifiable cultural requisites. If some justify this as necessary
political correctness in order to actively support minority rights the problem
is in the despotic nature of its result. Throughout history the wolf pack has
been dominated by the alpha male whose active participation rarely encouraged
justice but often rallied support for terror.

More labels.Football clubs have their supporters, trains their
train-spotters, and of course society has its Philo and anti-Semites. Bimbos
and Feminists are labels we use to denigrate women or raise them, and Essex
girls in England
have their equivalent in American princesses. How many of us know a nerd or an ‘anorak’? Political
labels define us as Zionists and anti-Zionists, Liberals and Conservatives,
extremists or moderates.

The labels
we use define our society and they are necessary because without them we could
not maintain a consistent approach.They
are a short-hand which defines our condition.Democracy is dependent on the transparency of justice but labels define
the Law (by which they too often limit justice for the sake of consistency of
purpose and incorruptibility) just as labels define the system of government we
use.

All these
labels make up our identity.

Identity was
initially defined by tribe, then by religion and then by nationality. In the 20th
Century the Nazis attempted to replace German faith with a state religion that
it incorporated into the national ethos. In totalitarian societies labels are
used not simply to define limits but also to compartmentalise those who are
empowered, those who are disenfranchised and the multiplicity of identities in
between.

For those
who declare ‘their way’ to be the only legitimate form of expression, it makes
sense that those who do not follow them are opposed to them.Dissension becomes illegal and must be
obliterated, order is essential, it is linear and hierarchical. Dictatorship craves order, is all predictable
and operates within defined limits.Identity
is us and them, and the ‘them’ are inevitably inferior, demonised and persecuted.
There is no grey area in these societies.

There are
forces in all societies that will strive for there to be only one way and their
calling card is intolerance and fear.But
the failure of democracy may well come about because in trying to be all things
to all people we satisfy no one.A fragmented
national identity will disintegrate under the burden of fear and hopelessness
which is fed by the collapse of confidence in society.

We need an
identity, no matter how complex it may be, to identify the path to travel; we
need a road map to arrive at the destination.We may take various paths to arrive at our destination but without consistent
rules our paths will inevitably and violently collide.

If there is
one thing that is killing Western Society it is that we have lots of labels, but
no depth of vision in which to position our labels onto our road map so that it secures
justice for everyone.